


Just take a confident go at it

by sheffiesharpe



Series: At Least There's The Football [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anthea is totally a ninja, BMWsexual, Flirting, Frottage, Gratuitous Harry Potter References, Greg Lestrade has two nieces and is good at football, M/M, canasta, nerds, seven million people and this city's still too small, thank God somebody can cook, the gang's all here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nieces' visit continues, Sherlock and John are unexpected, Lestrade finds London to be too small, and Mycroft's life isn't quite as disrupted as he thought it might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just take a confident go at it

_Sunday_

The big window in the master bedroom faces east, and Lestrade wakes to a weak golden light, to Mycroft still under his arm. A quick squint at the slightly-open curtains shows a few ribbons of clouds, but pale sky behind them—maybe a clear day, then, which would be nice—and a glance down shows a sleeping Mycroft still holding his forearm close against himself. Lestrade watches him for a moment, and something pulls softly upward at the edge of Mycroft’s mouth. Behind his eyelids, his eyes shift, and maybe they shift a little too purposefully for sleep.

Lestrade pitches his voice low, soft. “You’re not even asleep, are you?”

Mycroft doesn’t open his eyes, but he says, “I’ve been awake a little while.” Which likely means an hour or more.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” It’s likely close to seven, which is a bit later than he usually wakes up. He still hasn’t moved his arm, though. And it is perfectly warm beneath the blankets—warm, but not hot.

Mycroft’s fingertips stroke once against his wrist. “You don’t actually need me to give an answer to that question.” He inches back a little, makes them closer.

Lestrade grins against his shoulder. “Maybe I don’t need it, no.” Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out; lazy mornings are best. But—“Wouldn’t mind, though. All information is useful.” Would be nice to hear that Mycroft Holmes, who isn’t even dabbling with European politics on his mobile, is enjoying what constitutes a lie-in for him. With the hand he cannot see, he extends his fingers, drags one fingertip over that delicate hollow.

Mycroft hugs his arm closer. “Then I didn’t wake you because lying here, like this, with you, is one of the singularly extraordinary experiences of my life.”

And then the room is silent. Somewhere near the rooftop, there’s birdsong. Lestrade presses his lips to the back of Mycroft’s neck. There’s no room for anything to push its way from his throat.

The quiet spins out more. “Should I not have said that?” Mycroft’s hand lifts a little from his forearm.

Lestrade catches his fingertips. “That’s not it,” he says. “It’s just that no one _does_.” From downstairs, two creaking floorboards, a softly closed door. He levers himself up, kisses Mycroft’s mouth, and pulls away. “See you downstairs.” He hauls his Arsenal jumper over his head as he gets to the stairwell, and he finds the girls in the kitchen, peering through a window at a big white cat picking its way along a lush hedge.

“Is that Mycroft’s cat?” is the first thing Corrie says to him. She pulls him in to look, and Betsy asks about the horses. The girls look like they’ve been awake for a while, eyes bright, faces scrubbed.

“Horses?”

He’s tugged to another window, this one in the room she’d slept in, and sure enough, in a sloping bit of field dotted with trees, there are two draught horses. He hasn’t got answers for any of that. Upstairs, the water runs.

“We’ll get the full tour in a little bit. And then you can ask Mycroft about the menagerie.” But no one should have to do anything without breakfast, and he doesn’t need a tour to manage that. Particularly not when the refrigerator and cupboards have already been stocked—he wonders if it was Anthea who’d come here, to put everything in order.

“And the purple books,” Betsy says. “There’s more of them.” She points toward another room. Of course they’ve already cased the first floor. They follow him back to the kitchen, and Betsy starts filling the electric kettle. Corrie pulls a chair next to the counter, climbs onto it, and starts moving pieces of a tea set from the top shelf of the cupboard. This one is a very traditional blue and white set, patterned with bamboo stands and curling clouds. Lestrade tells himself that it’s probably not as expensive as it looks, so he can continue to breathe while Corrie wrestles the pieces down.

While the tea water heats, Betsy and Corrie are at his elbow again. “Delegate,” Betsy says.

Corrie nods. “Da said you were crap at it. We’re supposed to help you practice.” She taps her palms together. “So give us something to do.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “Your da needs a look in the mirror.”

Betsy nods. “That’s what Mum said, too.”

Which turns into a challenge of sorts: he can delegate, or he can be like Bob. He doesn’t tell the girls that Bob is _much_ better now than he used to be, actually. He just sets Betsy to cleaning berries and Corrie to assembling yoghurt parfaits because there’s some very lovely granola in a tin on the counter.

What really happens is that the girls leave him nothing to do but make coffee, and he’s sort of relieved to find that there’s no espresso maker—too much of that and he’ll be utterly spoiled—but there is a stovetop Moka pot and a grinder and more of that ridiculous Italian coffee. When Mycroft comes into the room two minutes later, he’s startled first by Betsy presenting him with a full cup on its delicate saucer, the milk already added, and then by Lestrade himself.

“You’re ruining my very necessary ability to drink terrible coffee.” Lestrade steps in close, puts a fingertip on Mycroft’s chest, right in the center of his tie. The tie is the color of syrah, rich and dark, and Lestrade finds himself a completely different kind of thirsty. He licks his lips, and Mycroft stares at his mouth.

Luckily, Corrie appears at Mycroft’s other elbow—he very nearly jumps—and puts a rather neatly layered parfait into his other hand. When Mycroft looks back at him, his eyes wide, bewildered—at everything, it seems—he only says, “I’m sorry?”

Lestrade leans up, kisses him once, grins. “You should be.” He nudges him toward the table, and Mycroft goes obediently to join the girls, who are already tucking into their breakfasts. When his coffee is finished brewing, Corrie holds out her glass of milk, and he tips a little of the coffee into it, and there they are, settled around the table. It should be weird, and maybe it is, a little, particularly for Mycroft, who’s been left with nothing to manage but his own spoon, and that seems to be something that throws Mycroft off a bit. Lestrade decides he likes doing that.

“Is that your cat?” Corrie hooks a thumb toward the window, where the white cat is stretched out across a sunny bit of the landscaping wall.

“That is Fortinbras, and Fortinbras is his own cat. I suppose he came with the property, but his particular decision is that I’m his tenant. Which seems correct, in the way of cats.” Mycroft sips at his tea.

“Friendly?” Lestrade knows that the girls will try to pet him.

Mycroft shrugs. “Indifferent, unfortunately.” He looks slightly disappointed at that. “But he is passing good company on a walk.” And Mycroft glances at the window, a certain fondness on his face. Lestrade tucks that away: Mycroft likes cats. Or at least that cat. Which makes sense: Sherlock likes dogs. All out of proportion and all out of sense, because dogs aren’t rational at all, are over-affectionate and often noisy and distracting and needy—but Sherlock likes dogs. Not enough to have one, of course, but they get on well enough.

“And the horses?” Betsy points in the other direction, though they certainly can’t see through the walls.

“Mr. Whitcombe’s pensioners.” Retired from pulling wagons of holidayers across fields at winter, nevermind the general scarcity of snow. It was close enough to some sort of Dickensian muddle to serve for tourists. “Delightful ladies,” Mycroft says. “Partial to apples and sugar cubes, provided one keeps one’s hand flat.” He turns up his palm, extends his fingers in demonstration. Lestrade imagines Mycroft in a field, feeding horses by hand, and even if Mycroft is in a three-piece suit in his mind’s eye, nothing less-suited to the scene, the image is somehow tender. And sad: he can’t see Anthea with him for that, and Sherlock—certainly not. Mycroft hasn’t mentioned anyone else by name as acquaintance of that sort, and certainly no friends.

Before he gets maudlin about that, Lestrade raises an eyebrow. “Turning country squire?”

“There are days,” Mycroft says, and Lestrade wants to ask him if he really means that, just to know, but the girls are carrying their dishes to the sink, edging conspicuously toward the kitchen doorway.

Mycroft shows the girls everything, starting with the dusty attic space, the ladder pulled down from the ceiling in a small room upstairs, half of it pristine, half of it piled with boxes, a chair that appears to have burn-marks, a few empty or cracked frames (for mirrors or paintings or something else, Lestrade can’t say), a small tub of broken china that was, at one time, apparently a green sister to the blue set downstairs. The glance Mycroft gives him confirms it: Sherlock.

Then the master bedroom—the girls are in love with the heavy, amethyst velveteen curtains. Another bedroom, above the kitchen, it seems; from this one, the horses are visible, and it’s plain, smells of clean, quiet disuse. The two bedrooms downstairs, the front room, which contains the sort of furniture no one particularly wants to sit on, but also more of those paintings that Mycroft seems to love, cloudy moors and trees along rivers in uncertain moonlight. There are bookshelves, but the purple books are not here. The purple books are in the back: in another cozy room along the back of the house, the fifth bedroom, Mycroft has another den arranged. The television isn’t quite so flashy, but is new, and two of the walls are floor-to ceiling bookshelves. The purple books are at Mycroft’s eye level. The sofa isn’t leather, but it is plush and wide, and there’s a matching loveseat.

The girls make a bee-line for the bookshelf. “You had more of these at your flat,” Betsy says, her fingertip a fraction of an inch from the purple spines. The numbers are the same on this set as the other.

“What _are_ they?” Corrie pushes up on her tip-toes to look more closely.

Mycroft lifts down the first of them, opens it to the table of contents. “These are my favorites.” As though it must be obvious—everyone has his favorite works of literature custom-bound and organized.

Betsy’s eyes open wide, and she takes down the second volume because Corrie’s already reaching for the one in Mycroft’s hands. Lestrade is pretty sure he’s going to have to apologize to Bob and Mari for Betsy asking for a set of books like that for every holiday event from now until forever.

While the girls look through them, he nudges Mycroft, speaks quietly. “You haven’t got _Justine_ or anything in there?” He rifles his memory for all the classics he’d searched for dirty bits when he was young. A bit of romance is one thing, but he doesn’t want the girls learning about sex from the Marquis de Sade.

“Certainly not.” Mycroft looks perplexed more than scandalized: why would anyone read de Sade? Mycroft shakes his head firmly. “Nothing distressing. Volume four has a long set of essays on the sublime, which might be challenging, but that’s all.” He raises his voice deliberately on the last part, and Lestrade watches Betsy’s hand come up, tug the volume down, though she doesn’t look at them. Mycroft’s smile is remarkably satisfied. Corrie’s laid claim to the first volume, which is apparently early English literature—mostly in Old English—but she’s stubborn. Lestrade tried to get her to pick one she could actually read, and he got an icy glare for his trouble.

Mycroft steps again to the bookshelf, takes down a new-looking hardcover version of _Beowulf_. The dust jacket’s one Lestrade’s seen in stores, a modern English translation of the poem by a famous Irish poet, and he’s vaguely surprised by that, though he’s not sure why. Mycroft hands it to Corrie. “This edition offers the original text of the poem beside the modern, should you care to see the relationship between the poet and the translator.”

Corrie thanks him and opens it immediately, though she keeps the custom version, with its footnotes, spread in front of her. In a minute, the translation is in her lap, its pages turning slowly. Mycroft may be magical.

But the morning is passing, and Mycroft is putting on his long coat. Lestrade doesn’t want him to go, but it’s surprising that he’s stayed as long as he has; it’ll be well into mid-morning before he gets back into London. He pulls on his driving gloves, and Lestrade squeezes his black-clad hand. He wants to lift Mycroft’s fingers to his face, but he doesn’t.

“Will you be back tonight?” Lestrade tries to remind himself that he’s had a lot of Mycroft’s time this week, sharing a bed three nights in a row.

Mycroft looks surprised that he’s asked. “I’m afraid I cannot say.” Not that he won’t, but that he doesn’t know. And it’s a long drive. Lestrade reminds himself of that, too: coming back here will add at least an hour on the end of his day and the answering hour the next morning. When he leaves the room, the girls wave, half-distracted by the books, and Lestrade walks him to the front door.

“Thank you,” he says again.

Mycroft’s smile is indulgent. He only says that the little market isn’t open on Sundays, but they shouldn’t starve, which is the understatement of the week.

The only thing to do, then, is to kiss him, softly, to rub his fingertips through the hair at the nape of Mycroft’s neck. It’s tempting, too, to wrap his arms around Mycroft’s shoulders, to hold onto him a moment, but he stops at the kiss. Otherwise would be too much. Some definition of too much.

He stays at the door until the car disappears.

***

They spend Sunday in a bucolic laze that sort of confuses all three of them, but pleasantly. Lestrade finds himself half-startling at sounds that aren’t actually there—he keeps looking at his mobile, which has been completely blessedly silent, and a mockingbird at the edge of the slightly open window makes all three of them jump when it calls out. It’s so _quiet_.

By afternoon, too, there’s real sunshine, and though the ground’s a bit soft with early spring wetness, it’s very nearly warm. They take the football out, kick it around until they’re all a proper mess, and Fortinbras sits atop the landscaping wall, following each pass like he ought to have a striped shirt on.

They follow the cat for a while, too, along hedgerows and to what is clearly the far edge of Mycroft’s property, marked by a tumble-down stone fence. They find a much-neglected orchard, the remnants of a shed that might have been a gamekeeper’s hut or a very large rabbit hutch, and something that would be a barn if there were animals in it. Instead, it has the space for a car, some broken furniture, a bicycle with two flat tyres and a strangely new-looking helmet wedged over its seat, a small lawn tractor. He doesn’t think he’s ever actually known someone who has one of those, and he laughs.

Betsy looks up at him. “I can’t see Mycroft on it, either,” she says, grinning.

Lestrade takes a photo of the girls sitting on it with his mobile, texts it to Mycroft, to Bob, to Marisol.

***

Mycroft doesn’t get back that night, though they make plans to meet him for lunch, for some sight-seeing the next day. He and the girls watch _Jeeves and Wooster_ later than they certainly ought. He settles into the big bed, sleeps in Mycroft’s spot on it.

***

 _Monday_

When they get to King’s Cross, there’s plastic sheeting up around the platform, saw-horses and caution tape. It says that it’s closed for maintenance, and even Mycroft looks faintly surprised. Lestrade just holds his breath because Corrie’s hand is death-grip-tight around his, and she’s breathing hard, the way she does when she’s trying not to cry.

Betsy says, “That can’t—it can’t.” She’s had her camera out and turned on since they made the transfer at the previous station. She’s even got her Gryffindor robes in her backpack, ready for the photo.

Lestrade is trying to decide whether he should say they’ll try coming back at the end of the week—but there’s only a few more days and the torn-up walkway around the fake platform will take a lot longer than a few days to put back together—or if he should just say that they have to come visit again, soon, which would be nice, too, if unlikely. There aren’t even workmen here, the regular platform all but echoing; everything is quiet.

Then Mycroft clears his throat. “What was the trick? Just take a confident go at it?” And he pushes aside the plastic with the tip of his umbrella, steps past the barrier. Corrie sneaks a look over one shoulder, drops his hand, and bolts after Mycroft. Betsy follows. He ducks in, too.

Behind the plastic, one side of the brick wall is being repaired, but the _Platform 9 ¾_ sign is still there, and Betsy’s already whirling on her robes and Corrie’s pressed against the brick, like she’s hugging it.

“Ginny Weasley was here,” she says. “ _Tonks_ was here.”

Lestrade doesn’t say that it’s more likely that the actors were on a set somewhere—besides, if he’s wrong, and it was shot on-location, he’ll get an earful. He just takes a picture. And then he takes twenty-seven.

They even get a shot of Mycroft, who protests and protest and protests until Corrie points her wand, says _imperio_ , and he stands there obediently, looking posh and a little malevolent and perfectly Slytherin with his charcoal suit and pocketwatch.

When they’ve cleared the station and Betsy and Corrie are a few steps ahead, tailing a woman walking an Irish wolfhound that’s almost as tall as Corrie, he leans toward Mycroft. “Did you fix it that way?” He was expecting it to be a mob scene, like that damn platform is most of the time. Generally, he’d rather chew off his own arm than go through King’s Cross these days.

Mycroft shakes his head. “Honestly, no. I’d thought the project was done by now.” Which it clearly wasn’t. Lestrade has mortar-dust on his shins from leaning for a better photo angle, and Mycroft has the same on his forearm from Corrie, who is fairly covered in it.

“So you just walked into a construction zone?” Not that fines would necessarily mean anything to Mycroft, but he’s generally interested in a certain tidiness of behavior, in decorum. Strolling into a cordoned-off area, a very dusty one at that, is not his style.

Mycroft shrugs. “I know you have your warrant card with you. That would have been sufficient to get us out of trouble, if there’d been any.” Mycroft’s ID is singularly unimpressive, his role very much of the “if you have to ask, you don’t need to know” variety. Ahead of them, Betsy’s still wearing her robes under her coat. “They’d have been so disappointed not to see it.”

He reaches, squeezes Mycroft’s wrist once before putting his hands back into his pockets. “That’s completely punk rock of you.” He pretends not to see the open hand Mycroft offers him, just for a moment, before he shifts his umbrella to that side.

***

 _Tuesday_

Mycroft drives them back to the house at the end of the day, and in the morning, late in the morning, he lists toward the door, stands on the edge of the rustic pavers leading up to the house. Despite the soft grey rain, the girls tumble out, Betsy climbing up onto the landscaping wall to try to inch closer to Fortinbras, who has been remarkably present but still aloof. The cat will only condescend to touch its pink nose to a fingertip, won’t submit to so much as a scritch of the ear.

“Do you have to go?” Since last night, Mycroft hasn’t said a word about meetings or plans today, though he’s done a few things on his mobile.

Mycroft swallows. “Well, no. I do not have to.” At his response, Betsy and Corrie both look at him, imploring.

“Then you have to stay.” Lestrade grins.

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” he says, but there’s something pleasant behind his eyes.

Betsy swings her legs. “It’s your house,” she says.

Corrie looks up from the piece of grass she’s trying unsuccessfully to whistle with. “And there aren’t any good games we can play with _three_ people.” She tilts her head, as though daring argument.

Lestrade takes Mycroft’s hand, presses it to his chest. “Yes, _dahling_ , do stay so we might have a civilized foursome for ca _nah_ sta.”

Corrie giggles, and Mycroft blushes. “I fear I don’t know the game.”

Betsy slides down from the stone ledge, and she catches Mycroft by the other hand as she zips back toward the door. “That’s okay,” she says. “You provide the civilized, we’ll provide the canasta.”

Mycroft glances down where Betsy’s got him by the hand before he follows her tugging. He sneaks a look over his shoulder, and Lestrade grins at him. Whether Mycroft likes it or not.

***

What Mycroft says is that he does not have to go—to the city, to work—but the eventuality of it is that work comes to him. In the form of Anthea, on a sleek silver BMW sport bike. At the sound of the engine, the crunching gravel, he glances through the wide kitchen window. The girls clatter to the door as Anthea swings her leg over the bike. She wears a BMW-branded set of riding leathers, piped in silver and the trademark blue. Lestrade watches her approach.

Lestrade glances over his shoulder—Betsy and Corrie aren’t in earshot. “That,” he says quietly, “is nearly enough to make me straight for a day. Fuck me.” He’s not sure if the last is mere expression or plea when it leaves his mouth. He feels like he should take a photo for John, but John has enough to deal with.

Mycroft blinks at him. “Really?” As though he’s truly surprised.

Now it’s Lestrade’s turn to look askance. “Honestly—that—” he gestures to Anthea’s head-to-toe leather “—does nothing for you?”

Mycroft shakes his head. “Not particularly, no.” And he returns to looking at his mobile, to making notes. He doesn’t do it on paper, but Lestrade can almost see him filing things, there behind his eyes. “Would you be a prince and let her in?”

“I have no idea what you’re doing with me or what I did to deserve you, but, God as my witness, I am not complaining.” He kisses the top of Mycroft’s head before he has to clear the space in front of the door, nudging small, muddy shoes out of the way. He’s not sure where the girls went—possibly to brush their hair or gather up things to show her. Or to spy on her from the upstairs window. Likely the last.

He opens the door to find Fortinbras perched on her shoulder, his purr as loud as the bike’s engine. When she glances up to look at the open door, the cat takes the opportunity to mash his white forehead to her cheek, to rub hard enough to lift her chin.

“That is enough of you,” she says, and she drops her shoulder until the cat jumps down. Fortinbras gives Lestrade a look—clearly _his_ fault. She edges in, and he makes plenty of room for her by stepping out onto the stoop. The rain’s stopped, at least for a bit.

He tilts his head at the motorcycle and sighs.

Anthea looks up from where she’s unfastening her boots. “When did you give up yours?”

“October twenty-seventh, 2002.” It feels like yesterday and a hundred years ago, at the same time. He’s lucky he can say he gave the bike up—it could have given him up permanently. All he’d done was broken his wrist, sprained his ankle, and totalled the motorcycle to avoid a woman running out into the street after her wayward Pomeranian. At the time—and the repeated phonecalls from his mother, his father, and Marisol—putting away the insurance money instead of replacing the bike seemed like the smart thing to do. In the last seven years, he’s not sure if it was the right thing to do, but there hasn’t seemed like a good time to get a new one. Certainly, he hasn’t exactly got a lot of extra hours for pleasure rides.

When he glances back at her, she slaps her right wrist with her left hand, pops the keys at him. He manages to catch them on the rebound from his chest.

“Helmets in the panniers.”

“Are you serious?”

Anthea levels a look at him. Right. Stupid question.

“You’ll treat her properly.” No knife’s edge of _and if you don’t—_ behind it. He’s surprised. “There’s a clear stretch of tarmac on past Mr. Whitcombe’s, a few good curves. A pretty pond, too, if the girls want to skim a few stones.”

And as if summoned, Betsy and Corrie are at the door. Corrie, for once, is behind Betsy, and quiet. Anthea holds out her jacket to them. “Fortinbras might be a bit more friendly if you’re wearing this.” Then she is inside and she and Mycroft step into the front room that no one seems to want to sit in. A heavy sliding panel comes across the doorway, and there are the three of them, in the foyer.

“Right, you lot. Blue jeans and bundle up.” The girls go running for their rooms, and he gets his leather jacket from the peg in the hall.

Part of it, he knows, is to get them out of the house while Mycroft and Anthea discuss something the knowledge of which is likely not only not for public consumption but likely also dangerous, treasonous in the wrong hands, and saleable on the black market. Which is to say an average Tuesday in the world of Mycroft Holmes.

He takes a minute to check the lights and controls on the bike—it’s so sexy he can hardly stand it. And Betsy and Corrie are more interested in who’s wearing Anthea’s riding jacket and petting the cat, who seems oddly in love with the coat, rubbing his face on the sleeves, nipping at the snaps and zipper-pull. He’s in love with the coat enough to completely ignore the petting, which is sort of like accepting it.

He sighs. “Do I have to take this out by myself?” He can’t believe they’re not interested, but, at the same time, if he’s alone, he can actually _ride_.

Betsy and Corrie are scrunched together on the step, both in Anthea’s coat, each of them with an arm in a sleeve. “Maybe later,” Betsy says while Fortinbras headbutts her palm.

“Have fun.” Corrie has her cheek against the jacket’s collar.

He puts on one of the helmets, and it must be Anthea’s because it smells faintly of rosewater and hair product. He flips up the visor. “Stay in the yard, and if you need anything, Mycroft’s inside.” He gets absent nods for his troubles, and, flipping the visor back down, he trundles the bike gently down the drive. Doing so feels _wrong_ , deeply wrong, the horsepower coiled beneath him, but everything they see will eventually get back to his mother. When he’s around the bend, though, he leans down over the warm metal, opens the throttle. The faintly greening fields whip by him, and one of the old horses breaks into a few-stride canter as he approaches, skims by.

If there is a pond, he doesn’t see it, doesn’t care to see it. The road is smooth, rich black, freshly redone, and it weaves satisfyingly around wide, old trees, the curl of a brook. He didn’t know that this sort of road even existed so close to London. There’s a neat four-and-a-half miles between Mycroft’s and the next knot of civilization—a school crossing, tighter clumps of houses, the sort of thing not suited for cutting through on a motorbike in the way he wants to—so he traverses the same stretch four times, getting the feel for the motorcycle properly, the kerb-hugging lean even where there’s no kerb at all.

The girls—and the cat—have somehow managed to get themselves several branches up into the oak beside the barn, and from there, onto its gently sloping roof. Which means they had a clear view, usually blocked by the hedge, of the not-particularly-legal speed at which he’d taken the last half-mile. Though that was better than them seeing the bit of a wheelie he pulled at the other end of the last run.

Corrie whistles at him, claps. She’s got sole possession of Anthea’s coat now, but Betsy has the cat, cradled in her arms, and Fortinbras looks happy to lie there limp as long as she keeps his face against a sleeve.

He puts the kickstand down on the bike, looks up at them. “And how did you monkeys get up there?”

“Very carefully.” Betsy puts Fortinbras down, and she edges toward the roof. It isn’t that high, only ten feet or so, at its bottom edge. He puts his arms out, and she jumps down lightly. He puts her down just in time to snatch Corrie out of the air because she’s fairly launched herself into space. She scrabbles around until she’s clinging to his back, the too-long jacket-sleeves around his neck, the way she used to do when she was small. Well. Smaller.

Eventually, she slides to the ground, and now the girls want to look at the bike.

He ruffles Corrie’s hair. “You’re going to have to give that jacket back.”

Corrie’s sigh is immense. “I know.” She tucks her chin and nose inside the zipped-up collar. Fortinbras stands up against her thigh, shoves his head under the coat’s bottom edge.

Betsy climbs onto the bike’s seat. “A little ride? But not as fast as you were going.”

“I promise.” He wouldn’t do that with a passenger of any kind—at least not anymore. He takes out the other helmet.

When they get back, he’s hoping that Corrie will want to try it, since Betsy did, because it’s the kind of thing that Corrie would love: a little precarious, not something most of the kids in her class have done. But when he gets back, Corrie’s not outside, and the cat is sitting on the wall, looking actually forlorn, staring in at Anthea and Corrie and Mycroft, sitting at the table.

He and Betsy go inside, and Lestrade can’t keep himself from putting one wind-chilled hand on the back of Mycroft’s neck. Mycroft, oddly enough, doesn’t startle even enough to jostle the teacup in his hand.

He just says, “Convince me that isn’t the chill of the grave, please, because that’s what it feels like.”

Lestrade glances up. Betsy’s busy fixing her tea, Anthea’s looking at her mobile, and Corrie’s looking at Anthea. He grabs the back of Mycroft’s chair, tips it back, kisses him hard. Mycroft clutches at his arm until Lestrade lets the chair settle again onto all four feet.

Mycroft takes an audible breath, and everyone looks at him. “I am convinced,” is all he says.

Lestrade can see Anthea biting down on a grin. Corrie scoots her chair back from the table, comes around to the range.

“I made you coffee,” she says. “Since you won’t drink The Best Tea Ever.” She holds out a cup.

“Thank you for indulging me in my greatest defect of character.” The coffee, though strong enough to curl his eyelashes, is still really good.

“I thought that was supporting a terrible football team.” Mycroft looks over his shoulder at him.

Both of the girls start singing “El Cant de Barça.” And Anthea’s clearly humming along. Both he and Mycroft stare at her. She, predictably, ignores them. Corrie returns to her chair, pulls her knees up to her chest, steals glances at Anthea every time she looks back at her Blackberry.

“With attitudes like that,” Lestrade says, “your father’s not even going to want you back.” The battle for the girls’ football affections has been a war between Bob and Mari since the beginning. Sadly, their bread is buttered firmly on the Spanish side because of Samuel Eto’o Fils and Xavi, but at least they agree with him on Thierry Henry. And both of the girls like American soccer, which feels like a travesty, but now they’ve got Becks over there, though that’s certainly not going to last.

“Fine with me.” Betsy grins smugly over her teacup.

“Yep,” Corrie says before she unfolds herself enough to finish her tea.

***

Before Anthea leaves, the business apparently managed through two closed-door sessions, the second of which involved a great deal of him bodily removing Corrie from her attempts at eavesdropping, Corrie visibly screws up her courage and asks for a ride on the motorcycle. With Anthea.

For the first time, Lestrade thinks he sees Anthea actually surprised. The moment passes quickly, and Anthea’s face smoothes into its usual calm, and she nods. “If it’s all right with your uncle.” It continues to be slightly unnerving to have all of her attention on him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure. Just no stunt driving.” He has absolutely no doubt that she could slice and dice an obstacle course on the bike. She, like Mycroft, doesn’t seem to do anything that she isn’t brilliant at. He takes his leather jacket down from its peg, is handing it to Corrie—it’s more than a little big, but it will keep out the wind better than her own little peacoat—when Anthea takes it, shrugs it on, and gives Corrie her own jacket again. Corrie is squirreled up in it in a trice.

He crouches in front of her. “You hold on and pay attention, yeah?”

She nods hard and follows Anthea. Betsy tries unsuccessfully to get Fortinbras to pay attention to her, and instead, she clambers back onto the barn roof to watch the red taillight disappear, waits for the headlamp, white-blue in the dimming light, to reappear.

In the interim, too, she grills Mycroft about Fortinbras’s Anthea-centrism. For once, Mycroft has no answer.

“This is the third time they’ve met,” he says, “and it’s been this way from the first.” He’s clearly a little put out over it, and Lestrade endeavors not to laugh at him.

“I’ll rub my face all over you, if that’s what you want.” He rasps his unshaven cheek against Mycroft’s shoulder. It makes a Velcro-like sound against the fabric of his suit.

Betsy giggles, then flicks an acorn from the rooftop to the ground. At the sound, Fortinbras is all attention, and she starts finding more things to drop, more things for him to leap on.

Mycroft’s hand curves around his hip. “Yes,” he says, his voice light, flippant. “That is exactly it.” It’s still a joke, except for the slow drag of his palm.

Swallowing hard, Lestrade finds himself grateful to hear the BMW’s purr on the tarmac. Thinking too hard about that’s going to get him in a world of trouble again.

Corrie’s grin when she takes the helmet off is huge, and she dutifully trades back Anthea’s jacket for Lestrade’s. “Thank you,” she says, and she ducks behind him all at once.

“You’re very welcome.” To Mycroft, she says, “Cavendish? Half past?”

“Indeed.”

She refuses, again, the offer to stay for dinner, says goodbye to the girls, and gives him that crisp nod. And removes the cat from her shoulder one last time before the bike slips out of the drive.

For as cold as it’s getting without proper daylight, it’s difficult to get the girls back into the house, but once they’re in, they bundle into the den. Corrie’s still wearing his coat.

He takes out his phone and holds it out to them. “Call your da and tell him you’re both joining motorcycle gangs.” It’s early enough in the day that he’ll just be doing prep work around the restaurant and bossing other people around. He’d let Bob and Mari know when they got in, and there was a flurry of text messages over Platform 9 ¾ yesterday, but they haven’t really talked to him. Marisol has been e-mailing all of them every night, since her hours for the week are utterly mad.

Mycroft excuses himself to finish up a few things for queen and country as Corrie puts the phone on speaker. Bob feigns ignorance of even having children, as neglected as he’s been.

Corrie tells him to save the drama for the llama.

Betsy just says they’ve been totally busy. “And _Tío’s Mío_ has this _house_ and it’s out in the _country_ and there are _horses_.”

“And _motorcycles_ ,” Corrie says.

“Greg—”

“Yes, I am ruining them forever. You’re welcome.” He hopes Bob can hear the grin on his face.

“My hair’s as short as yours now, Da,” Corrie says.

It sounds like Bob chokes on something.

“But Mycroft’s _lovely_.” Betsy sits cross-legged on the ottoman.

“And his _books_ ,” the girls say at the same time. Bob makes a suffering noise. The deathmatch between bookcases and cookware continues.

He edges out of the room. He’ll talk to Bob when they’re done.

***

He reassures Bob that no one was in mortal danger and that he has no immediate plans to get another bike—though Bob definitely thinks he should go for classic, not contemporary, if he does it again, and for the record, he never said that if his wife ever asks—and that the girls are being extraordinary in all ways save one small fit while Mycroft and Anthea were working over _who_ was reading _what_ , even though Corrie didn’t sit still long enough to turn a single page.

Later, he and Betsy are making popcorn for their continued _Jeeves and Wooster_ marathon because sea salt and white pepper popcorn is about the only confirmed nosh-in-front-of-the-telly food that Mycroft will indulge in. The girls prefer butter and cayenne, though, and he’s careful to keep the bowls properly separate.

He’s handing Betsy theirs when he remembers something from earlier. “When you were telling your da about Mycroft’s place, what did you call him?”

Betsy swallows the piece of popcorn she’s been chewing. “ _Tío’s Mío_.”

He must give her a funny look because she rolls her eyes. “Your Spanish isn’t that bad. _Mío_ , like ‘my,’ because of his name and ‘cause he’s yours—” She sighs. “You think it’s stupid. I’ll stop.”

“No,” he says. “No.” He kisses the top of her head. “I like it.”

***

 _Wednesday_

They’ve most of an hour before it’s time to meet Mycroft for dinner, and Betsy sees the shop first. When Corrie sees it, too, both of his hands are caught and he’s dragged into the used bookstore, one corner of its small front window done in homage to Flourish & Blotts with a bit of black cloth, some wizened sticks that are wand-like enough, and a rather impressive stack of interesting-looking books. The woman behind the counter is small, owl-eyed behind thick glasses, but she gives a hello that’s really half a shout, says welcome, mind the ferret (though the ferret is a plump, snoring ball in a basket on the counter), some sweeties in a jar (though they’re the sort of mixed hard candies no one much likes), and throw something if they’re needing aught. She seems to recognize, gently, that he’s so much furniture in this encounter, and ignores him in a comfortable, kind way. So he just watches the girls, Betsy already starry-eyed at a shelf full of Austen, Corrie crouched in front of Lloyd Alexander.

Lestrade doesn’t bother to say that they can’t possibly be at a loss for reading material—they’ve got two libraries just of Mycroft’s, and they’re a short walk from the British Library, where this morning he’d thought Betsy was going to crush all of the fingers in his left hand she’d been so overwhelmed. And that was before Mycroft showed the attendant in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery _his_ library card. Then they were ushered into a smaller room off to the side, and the white gloves were distributed. Corrie had curled her hands into fists, held them against her chest, wouldn’t touch anything, even when invited. Lestrade’s not sure either of them breathed in that forty-five minutes.

But the shop’s warm and comfortable, and they’re alone in the store, so he sits in the one dusty armchair wedged in a corner and lets the girls browse. And if he has to take them to the Post and ship a few things home, that’s all right.

Betsy comes up to him, holding a tattered thin volume. “Here,” she says. “Mycroft likes this.” She puts it in his hands: a collection of e.e. cummings, half its pages loose and fluttering. There’s a faded blue ribbon around it, holding it together.

“How do you know?” He turns it over. The little thing’s a wreck.

“Volume six,” she says, and she holds her fingertips about an inch apart. “There’s like, this much of this poet in it.” She points at the fading writing on the back. “He wrote the spring poem—the ‘goatfooted balloonman’ one.” She returns to the shelf she was looking at.

Mycroft doesn’t need a book that’s a wreck, but it’s small, and there’s something Lestrade likes about it. It’s also only 50p, the price penciled in carefully where a corner of the cover’s been torn off. So he keeps it, adds it to the admirably restrained pile of books the girls gathered—only _Taran Wanderer_ and a different translation of _Beowulf_ than the one she’s been grappling with for Corrie and _Mansfield Park_ for Betsy. For five quid, it’s about as good an hour as can be spent, particularly with the chance to pet the drowsy ferret, which rolls and offers its stomach for a few strokes, and he puts the little book of poetry at the bottom of the bag.

They walk the rest of the way to the restaurant, where Mycroft is already waiting. He greets the girls first, who immediately launch into a minute-by-minute recap of their day since leaving the library: Regent’s Park, the Zoo and the Reptile House(!), bookshop. They’re already seated before Mycroft turns to him.

“Yeah, I’m just here to carry the shopping. Don’t mind me.” Lestrade sighs dramatically.

Mycroft leans in, kisses his cheek. “Yes, you are very put-upon.” The girls laugh, and Lestrade’s asking whose side they’re on when it sinks in: Mycroft kissed him in public. And he didn’t complain about it.

***

On the walk to Mycroft’s car, Mycroft gives his umbrella to the girls because the rain’s coming down hard, and they let the water sluice them. Lestrade folds the bag around the books, tucks it inside his mackintosh, holds it there with one arm. Mycroft says he actually wishes he’d worn his hat, and he bumps Lestrade’s shoulder amiably at the look he gets.

“I told you. Functional and fashionable.”

“Yes,” Mycroft says, when they duck into the parking garage. “I’m sure that’s your motive.” He holds the car door open for the girls, who have managed to get themselves soaked from the knees down.

“You know it’s not,” Lestrade says, winking over the roof of the car, before he slides into the passenger’s seat. Mycroft smiles a little, doesn’t protest.

***

 _Thursday_

After the grey Tuesday and Wednesday, the weather’s taken another pleasant turn, and, after Mycroft leaves for work, Lestrade decides today’s a good day to be a bit extravagant, dinner-wise, and a good one for a nice walk.

They’re coming back from the market, accompanied by Fortinbras, who keeps a healthy distance between himself and them, but who also cannot be content to let them alone. He’s looking at the cat, who’s pounced on something in the hedge beside the road, when Betsy asks whose car that is, parked in the drive. It’s an unassuming, slightly dented, green Peugeot, and Lestrade has never seen it before. The door to the little barn is open, too, and he just manages to catch the back of Corrie’s jacket before she goes sprinting off toward it. He puts a finger to his lips, and the girls get his meaning, edge behind him.

They walk carefully, and Lestrade cannot keep the worst-case scenarios out of his head: Moriarty, some shadow agency looking for Mycroft. Even the much-less-dramatic options are not something he’s looking forward to: how’s he going to explain himself to the gardener, to some other acquaintance of Mycroft’s, to his mother? Because he knows she exists, and Mycroft hasn’t said more than three words about her. But he doesn’t think that the Holmes matriarch would drive an aging green Peugeot. The assessment doesn’t relieve any of the nerves. He knots his fist tighter in the canvas bags; he’s never knocked anyone out with a brace of chickens and a collection of various veg, but he’ll try it if he has to.

Bits of voice carry back, muddled by the songbirds that aren’t, apparently, bothered by any of this, and that makes him feel a little better; persons with ill intent don’t usually carry on with a great deal of chatter. A few steps closer, and Lestrade nearly wishes it were some sort of splinter cell assassin.

“—can’t imagine _you_ this far from Chinese takeaway and a proper morgue,” John says. “And what did you do to this chair?”

“It also had it coming. When we’re inside, I’ll show you the wall it went through.” Sherlock’s voice, vaguely amused.

Through the slit at the hinge of the door, Lestrade sees the shape of John come nearer to the sound of Sherlock, though he can’t see Sherlock. John’s hand, reaching, a pale flash. John speaking—“Thank you. For showing me this.”

Lestrade almost feels bad about it. He clears his throat, loudly. John looks right at the space where the door’s swung open on its hinge, sees Lestrade.

“Sherlock. You utter shit.” John heaves a sigh—Lestrade sees his shoulders rise and fall—and he comes around the door, his face as even and genial as ever.

Sherlock follows, no hint of remorse in his voice. “Don’t swear, John. There are children present.”

At the word “children,” both Betsy and Corrie roll their eyes.

“I know, but you’ve heard me swear often enough.” John reaches to shake Lestrade’s hand. “Sorry,” he says. “I had no idea you were here.” He turns toward the girls, and Betsy and Corrie look first at Lestrade.

“Betsy, Corrie, this is Doctor John Watson, and this—” He shoots a look at Sherlock, who is looking on benignly, his hands clasped behind his back.

“—is the man with the skull.” Betsy and Corrie say it at the same time, a little breathlessly, and Sherlock actually grins, properly.

“Sherlock Holmes.” He inclines his head slightly, and the gesture is very Mycroft-like. “My reputation precedes me.”

“Only about an eighth of it, and it had better stay that way.” Lestrade puts one of the shopping bags in Sherlock’s hands and starts for the front door. John offers to carry the bags that Betsy and Corrie are holding, but they won’t give them up. Unsurprisingly, by the time they’re inside, John’s got the bag Lestrade had given to Sherlock.

Lestrade is putting away the shopping and Betsy is making tea and Corrie is studying Sherlock, who studies her back. John’s doing his best to be helpful, taking two more cups from their high shelf.

Corrie says, “You’re Mycroft’s brother. You don’t look much alike.”

“For which I’m exceedingly grateful.” Sherlock folds his arms.

Corrie does the same. “That’s not very nice. And Mycroft’s handsome. He has a cool hat.”

At the last, Sherlock’s eyebrow quirks, but he doesn’t say anything about that, specifically.“He’s my brother. I don’t have to be nice to him.”

Betsy steps around them to put the teapot on the table. She pats Sherlock’s elbow. “You’ll grow out of that,” she says. “Gran says Da and Tío G used to fight all the time, too.”

John snickers, and Sherlock fixes him with a glare. John just puts down teacups, pours. Sherlock steps away from his cup, his hands clasped behind him again, his forearms pinning down the long edges of his coat.

Corrie follows, her hands behind her, the edges of her cardigan flapping at her elbows. For the better part of the next half-hour, most of which is spent in fairly normal consumption of tea, Corrie mirrors Sherlock, staying as much behind his left side as she can. It’s made easier by the fact that Sherlock won’t sit at the table, drinks his tea standing at the corner of the refrigerator. Lestrade can see him assembling the story of their week thus far.

“This child is mimicking me.” Sherlock peers down at Corrie, who peers back up. There’s that dark little glint in her eyes again at the word “child.”

“She does that.” Bob and Marisol have been trying to get her to stop, since she’s been in trouble for doing it to various teachers at school, but Sherlock deserves it. But Sherlock, being Sherlock, doesn’t seem annoyed.

“She isn’t terrible at it.” High praise from Sherlock. He cocks his head, and he smiles as Corrie makes the decision to change from mirror image to direct copy: Sherlock’s head to the left, hers to the left.

“Don’t encourage her.” Which is exactly the wrong thing to say.

“She can hear you,” Corrie says, but her arms remain crossed, her fingers splayed around her own elbows, just like his.

“Then she should listen.” Sherlock crouches, but he doesn’t let her crouch. “Pay attention to the line of the body. I lead with my face because that’s where my best senses are, though I have been informed it makes me seem smug. But I am smug so I see no reason to change. John doesn’t lead; he is a straight line entering a room, unless he’s tired or embarrassed, and then he leads with his head, as though he’s about to fall forward.” John makes an exasperated sound but doesn’t argue. “Mycroft leads here most of the time—” he gestures across the lower half of his ribs, and Lestrade holds his breath for whatever awful thing Sherlock’s going to say, but he only says, “—because that’s how Churchill walked and my ridiculous brother chooses poor role models.” Sherlock also says nothing when Corrie reaches out and flicks him in the shoulder for picking on Mycroft.

Sherlock goes on, points down. “But you’re leading with your feet because you haven’t quite grown into them, and when you do, it will be splendid, but for now you have to pay attention if you’re going to do it right.” He stands again, and he walks away, down the hall, and Corrie follows. “Better,” comes Sherlock’s voice from around the corner.

Lestrade just flops on the sofa next to John, and Betsy laughs.

***

When the front door opens, Lestrade wonders if he should have warned Mycroft that Sherlock and John were here. That they’d be staying for dinner. He wipes his hands and goes to greet him, and Mycroft has already heard the sounds of chaos from the den.

“Oh no,” Mycroft says. “No no no no. He didn’t—”

Lestrade holds him by his lapels as Mycroft makes a move for the hallway, steers him instead into the kitchen. “He’s been on remarkably good behavior today.” He pours Mycroft a glass of pinot noir, puts it into his hand even as he steals a kiss.

“It won’t last,” Mycroft says, as John’s voice carries back: _son of a bitter monkey’s uncle_. John has been trying to avoid swearing in front of the girls, and it’s been mostly hilarious. Sherlock just keeps switching languages. They’re playing canasta, though when he’d left to finish dinner, it had dissolved into a contest of catching each other cheating. Betsy is better at dealing, undetected, from the bottom of the deck than he really wants to think about.

“I’m optimistic today.” Particularly because he’d managed to get the caramel for the flans to the perfect point—robust but not burnt—in the midst of John showing the girls how to set up a proper rugby line-out in the kitchen. Corrie grinned down from where John and Betsy had her braced, and he tossed her an oven mitt just so she’d have something to catch. Sherlock had rolled his eyes and refused to participate in that activity, but later in the day, he deduced the life story of the postman as he delivered some sort of general mailing, much to the girls’ delight. And he kept it as delicate as Sherlock is ever able. Lestrade is mostly certain that the words “self-loathing sadomasochist” slipped through unheard because John had a carefully executed sneezing fit. Sherlock had glared at the interruption, but he didn’t repeat it. Then Sherlock burned the flier, a page from a magazine, and a little bit of paper from his pocket to show the girls the differing effects of the various inks and paper types as evidenced by the characteristics of the flame. An autopsy of the resultant ash followed.

Mycroft looks doubtful until his second mouthful of wine, when, from down the hall, Sherlock actually starts shouting in what Lestrade thinks is Polish. Corrie’s maniacal giggle follows. Mycroft looks into his glass like he’s been drugged, and he presses two fingers to the underside of his own jaw, his wrist to his forehead.

“New audience,” Lestrade says. Sherlock is surrounded by three people who think he’s the cleverest, most interesting thing ever; of course he’s pleased.

Mycroft steps in close, pins him to the counter, kisses him deeply. “You’re amazing,” he says. He kisses him again, and Lestrade slides his hands under Mycroft’s jacket, up over the fabric of his waistcoat, until there’s only the thin cotton of his shirt under his fingertips.

“I’ve never seen anything so repugnant.”

Mycroft startles, but Lestrade doesn’t let him go, not until he’s finished the kiss he started. Then they both turn to look at Sherlock, standing in front of the refrigerator. His pale cheeks are pinked, and he turns his back, opens the door, fishes out a fresh bottle of ginger ale. “Piratical,” he mutters at the bottle. The four of them at the end of the hall might be high on carbonation and ridiculousness. Sherlock otherwise ignores them, swoops out of the room again.

Lestrade keeps his hand on Mycroft’s hip. “He’s not selling it very well.” He steals a sip of Mycroft’s wine before he returns to the gas range. “You’ve got ten minutes before the chaos moves to this table.” He likes that there’s no dining room here. Just a big kitchen, the sky dark beyond the wide window save the silvery smudge of the moon behind a veil of clouds. It’s something else he’s never had, not for his own.

Mycroft excuses himself, and there are his footsteps on the stair.

Lestrade puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles, and in a minute, the girls come skittering into the room in their socked feet.

“Behaving yourselves?” He raises an eyebrow at them.

Corrie rakes her fingers through her short-cropped hair, and stands to attention. Betsy separates her ponytail into two halves, yanks it to tighten it, and salutes. They solemnly swear they are up to no good, indeed. He pats them both on the head, and Betsy swats at his hand.

“Lay the table for me?”

They nod, and Corrie makes origami lilies out of the linen napkins while Betsy does plates and silver.

“One fork is sufficient,” he says.

She sighs dramatically at him. Clearly, he hasn’t called Bob’s restaurant frou-frou often enough if he’s still on with the multiple forks.

He lets them to it and goes to check the den, to be certain nothing is currently on fire or seeping into the very fine Flemish rug. In the room, John and Sherlock are talking, and he knows he shouldn’t, but he stops in the hall, listens.

“Not a word about Mycroft’s weight or eating issues or any of it.” John’s gathering empty glasses, things clinking, and Sherlock’s rolling his eyes.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Sherlock shoves the sofa back into its previous position, and the drag of the feet sounds like it left a mark. “Mycroft hasn’t heard a bloody word I’ve said since—all this.”

Lestrade has a distinct feeling that he is the “this” in question.

“Less about you and Mycroft baiting each other and more about you not making fat cracks in front of adolescent girls.”

Sherlock snorts. “They’re of perfectly healthy proportions, rather tending toward the opposite end of the scale.” He readjusts the ottoman with a kick. “It wouldn’t even apply.”

“And so’s Mycroft, now.” John’s voice, calm, waiting for Sherlock to assemble that.

Sherlock throws his hands up. “Fine. I shall speak only when spoken to.” He stalks toward the doorway. “I’m putting the metatarsals in the other half of the drawer.”

“Fine,” John says. “Because I know you’ve already done it.” John rounds the corner first, comes face to face with him. “Greg.” John’s startled, and he pauses, gives up on whatever else he might have said when he sees that Lestrade has been standing just outside the door. “Right.” He puts his head down and makes for the kitchen.

“I knew you were there,” Sherlock says, and brushes by.

***

“So where is the skull?” Corrie asks between bites of turnip mash. “Why didn’t you bring it? _Tío_ said you used to bring it everywhere.”

“It’s at Baker Street.”

Corrie only nibbles at another piece of chicken, waiting for the rest of the answer.

“And John’s my new skull.” Sherlock steals a sidelong glance at John and also a bit of the crispy skin from John’s plate while John’s looking back at him. “He’s rather a better conversationalist. Some of the time.” Sherlock chews thoughtfully. “When he’s not talking rubbish.”

“Thanks very much,” John says, dryly.

Betsy says, “And John can loan you gloves, when you’ve forgotten your own. Like today. A skull can’t do that.”

John’s eyebrows draw together, and he looks at Lestrade, at Mycroft. “Did you—”

But Mycroft hasn’t seen John or Sherlock outside today, and Lestrade shakes his head. “I don’t give a rat’s ar…senal of insults what either of you wears.”

John turns back to Betsy.

“They’re brown,” she says. “And knit.” Much like John’s jumper. She glances at Sherlock. “He’s not wearing anything brown, and his coat isn’t brown. He seems rather…matching, like Mycroft.” At that, the corners of Mycroft’s mouth curl up. Holding up her hand, too, she points just to the hinge of her wrist. “And they were kind of small on him.” She returns to her near-surgical dismantling of a drumstick.

Sherlock sniffs. “I didn’t forget them. Mine have acid burns in the fingertips and I haven’t replaced them yet.” But when he gets up to fetch a second bottle of wine, he’s smiling.

Corrie takes a sip of her ginger ale, turns in her chair to watch Sherlock as he moves around the table, refilling glasses as neatly as a sommelier. “I bet your actual gloves are just like Mycroft’s. Black leather. Like an assassin.” Her grin is all teeth.

“Your assistant has a pair like that, too, doesn’t she, Mycroft.” Sherlock raises an eyebrow over his glass.

“Only when the temperature calls for it. It’s been unseasonably balmy, don’t you think?” Mycroft’s face is placid.

“No assassination talk at the dinner table, thank you.” Lestrade doesn’t want to know what Mycroft and Sherlock are actually discussing.

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “Assassination is so much better suited to dessert.”

Both of the girls giggle. Lestrade is certain Bob and Mari are never going to let them visit again.

***

Two bites into dessert, after a frankly obscene moan around his spoon, John sighs. “Greg, if I’d known you were capable of this, I’d have moved in with _you._ ”

“I wasn’t looking for a flat-share.” He’s not even going to pretend he doesn’t love this part.

“Immaterial.” John presses his hands together in supplication. “I will do all of the washing up, from now unto eternity. Marry me.”

At the same time, with the same inflection, Mycroft and Sherlock both say, “I think not.” And then they both look utterly mortified. Betsy and Corrie whoop and point, one to the other. The carrying-on over that might last for another ten minutes, except there’s still flan to consume, and coffee and tea to be drunk.

When they’re finished, he sends the girls outside with a bowl of chicken scraps—no bones—for Fortinbras. John is still making his case as an ideal husband by insisting that he—and Sherlock, who makes a face—will clean up. Lestrade isn’t going to argue, and Mycroft says he’ll start a fire in the den.

When Mycroft stands, Sherlock bumps into him, not even a bit accidentally, with the last of his coffee. The liquid sloshes and the cup tumbles, though Mycroft catches the blue china before it can hit the floor. His grey suit, though, is coffee spattered in total—his shirt, waistcoat, trousers, and even a bit at the bottom of the jacket.

“So sorry,” Sherlock says, and he smiles, close-mouthed. “You’ll likely want that to soak.”

Mycroft takes a deep breath. “Excuse me.” And Mycroft leaves the room.

John only sighs, and Lestrade doesn’t even know what to say. For Sherlock, that sort of thing is really rather minor. Lestrade considers following Mycroft, to be certain that there isn’t something else going on with what just happened, something from their past, but he doesn’t. Right now, Mycroft’s likely taking off his shirt upstairs. Lestrade’s trying not to think about _that_ as much as he is.

The kitchen is quiet save the run of water as John washes and rinses dishes, and Lestrade watches Corrie shuffle across the yard in his trainers (they must have been beside the door) to try to get Fortinbras to come to her hand.

Sherlock picks up a towel, dries plates as John hands them off. Finally, he says, “You’re not going to go comfort him?”

“He’s changing his clothes, not weeping in a corner.” Lestrade can hear his steps upstairs. He’s pretty certain he’s right about his assessment. Hopes he’s right.

Sherlock is quiet again for a little while, putting spoons in the fork side of the drawer, clearly just because he can. His eyebrows furrow. “Clotheshorse will probably enjoy showing off another ensemble,” he mutters.

John opens his mouth, sort of shakes his head, and closes it again. Whatever he was going to say, apparently, is not utterable.

Then Mycroft is behind him, without warning, wrapping his arms around Lestrade’s waist. Lestrade can’t help the little jump, and Mycroft makes a smug noise against his neck. John glances over his shoulder, does a double-take, and even Sherlock blinks twice.

Mycroft just turns on his heel and goes to start the fire he said he would. John and Sherlock stare at the navy sweatshirt, the blue jeans. Lestrade stares, too, but mostly because the denim does very nice things for Mycroft’s arse, which is usually covered by the cut of his jackets. Which is a goddamned shame.

“Right,” Sherlock says. “We’re going.”

John catches his arm. “On most of a bottle of pinot, you’re not driving anywhere for at least four hours. Five would be better.”

Sherlock visibly braces himself.

Lestrade pinches the bridge of his nose. “He drove?”

“Yes?” John looks from Lestrade to Sherlock. The implication: of course Sherlock drove because John hasn’t got a driving license. That had come up in conversation months ago. Lestrade had been under the happy delusion that John had simply changed that fact about himself. John’s a capable bloke, certainly within the means to pass the examination and so on.

“You know _he_ hasn’t got a driving license.” He’s had this conversation with Sherlock at least half a dozen times now.

“I did not know this.” John folds his arms, appears to be enjoying this.

“But, as you clearly saw,” Sherlock says, “I am perfectly _capable_ of driving, far better than the majority of London drivers.”

Lestrade is not agreeing with him on that out loud. “Tomorrow, I’ll drive—whomever’s car that is—back in.” They’ve got a few more dates with museums and obscure locations relevant to Harry Potter lore to explore. Sherlock doesn’t name the owner of the car, doesn’t bother fighting the suggestion, and Lestrade’s not going to ask questions. Of course, now he has to tell Mycroft that he just more or less demanded Sherlock and John stay the night.

He leaves John and Sherlock to finish the washing up, takes a quick detour to the front door to call the girls in, who have both migrated out to the wall with the cat, and finds Mycroft recreating the nest of cushions and blankets Corrie’s made the past two nights in a row.

“I might have ordered them to stay the night. Sorry.” It’s not his house, it’s not his place. It’s strange how easily he’s forgotten that. He’d been worried, at the beginning of the week, that it would be weird. Having Sherlock and John here—this whole day—is definitely weird, but a different kind of weird.

“Of course they’re staying.” Mycroft turns on the lamp beside the sofa where Betsy’s been keeping her books. “When I was upstairs, I freshened up the guest bedroom.” He tosses another blanket at the loveseat, lets it fall haphazardly. “Hopefully this time, he won’t put anything through the window.” Mycroft grins with half of his mouth, and Lestrade can’t help but kiss him again. He tastes of caramel and cream, and Lestrade would be perfectly content to spend the rest of the night just like this, Mycroft’s tongue soft and slow against his.

Then someone whistles. And two sets of footsteps patter back the hall. A muddle of voices.

“No,” Sherlock says, from rooms away. “You cannot make me. I will not—John!” Thumps.

And John steps into the room with a protesting Sherlock slung over his shoulder, and if Sherlock really wanted to get free, John would be on the ground, unconscious, or worse in a twinkling. Mostly, Lestrade thinks Sherlock’s not fighting it because he’s laughing too hard, the shudders silent and shaking him. John dumps him unceremoniously on the loveseat. And then sits down, his left arm across the arm of the loveseat, as though he didn’t just do that.

“So,” John says, with perfect calm. “What are we watching?”

“ _Prisoner of Azkaban_?” Betsy holds up the DVD case, her grin wide and winning and hopeful. They’re in the middle of _Jeeves and Wooster_ , and Lestrade can follow the girls’ logic—it would be rude to toss Sherlock and John into the middle of the series. Apparently, that same reasoning doesn’t extend to Harry Potter. They’re likely hoping that _someone_ will ask a question so that they unleash the full force of their knowledge.

Oddly enough, Sherlock just nods. At John’s disbelieving look, Sherlock says, “Hermione is very clever. Unlike most people I know.” Pointed looks at Lestrade and John. But then Sherlock prods John into what must be a more acceptable position before shoving a pillow onto John’s lap and dropping himself on it, his long legs hooked over the loveseat’s other arm.

Corrie comes scurrying in from her room, pyjama-clad, and flings herself into the cushion-nest that’s at the base of the sofa, between the vertical line of Mycroft’s shins and the hypotenuse where Lestrade’s legs hang off the edge . “And this one is _Tío_ ’s favourite.”

Lestrade reaches down, rubs his fingertips through her hair, and she tilts her head back until she’s looking at him, upside down, grinning.

Betsy cues up the film, keeps the remote with her as she tucks in on the couch, too. She puts the throw-pillow against Lestrade’s ribs, curls up against him. Upside-down still, Corrie looks at Mycroft. “You changed.”

“I find myself more comfortable now.” Mycroft shifts a bit against the arm of the sofa, settling in deeper, his arm curled around Lestrade’s waist. Lestrade hopes that Mycroft isn’t planning on getting up any time soon because he and Betsy have him pinned on one side, and Corrie’s preparing to use one of his legs as a backrest.

“I find your metaphors obvious and unoriginal.” Sherlock’s voice is mumbled—he has John’s left hand over his own face.

“Ssh, movie’s starting,” John says, and from the corner of his eye, in the faint firelight and television flicker, Lestrade thinks he sees John’s hand slide up into Sherlock’s hair.

***

 _Friday_

Not for the first time, Lestrade thinks that London is not quite big enough. More than seven million people, and it’s still not possible to walk ten blocks without running into someone one knows and would rather not see just now.

There’s a window when he could avert the impending contact: he sees Will before Will sees him, the width of his shoulders, the bare arms under the short sleeves of his Royal Mail shirt. Will never wears a coat unless it’s below freezing. Part of it is that he doesn’t need one, and part of it is that it means showing off his biceps, his forearms. Which are worth the showing off—Lestrade won’t deny that. He can’t deny, either, the small tug in his stomach at seeing Will. They’ve run into each other since they broke up, three times. The first two were awkward, the last, a little less so. But this situation—this could be more than a little bit awkward. He considers shuttling the knot of them into the nearest storefront, but there’s no way to make it seem casual. Part of him wants to flip two fingers to the universe: they’re nowhere near Will’s neighborhood, not near his work—why does he have to be _here_ now?

He could just say, “We’re turning here” and name the reason. Mycroft would understand. Then Mycroft’s hand brushes his elbow, the tilt of his head directing Lestrade’s gaze to Betsy’s left hand lightly conducting, at her side, the street musician at the opposite corner. The pleased—maybe fond—look on Mycroft’s face is all he needs to decide: he doesn’t want to avoid Will. He raises his head, puts his arm around Mycroft’s waist. It still feels less intimate than holding hands.

Mycroft glances at him—they haven’t been touching all that much in public—as Will looks in the correct direction, and now this is happening. Lestrade feels Mycroft’s posture change, his spine stiffening. Surely Mycroft already knows who he is. The girls are fairly oblivious until Will says his name, lifts his chin in greeting, keeps his hands jammed in his pockets until they’re two paces apart.

Maybe Lestrade makes a little show of sliding his right arm from around Mycroft’s waist before taking a step forward, before he shakes Will’s hand. And maybe Will gives him a long once-over—Will always did enjoy his hair like this and the earring.

Lestrade puts his hand on Mycroft’s elbow. “Mycroft, Will. Will, Mycroft.” He doesn’t give last names because Will will recognize the Holmes part, and he doesn’t want to explain that yes, he _is_ seeing the sociopath’s brother.

As soon as Mycroft says, “How lovely to meet you” and shakes Will’s hand, Lestrade’s glad he didn’t give Mycroft Will’s last name. There’s something in Mycroft’s voice—Will doesn’t pick up on it, responds with his usual easy roughness, and Will can’t fake an emotion to save his life, which both caused and solved a number of their issues—but Lestrade’s gut says _Not good_.

Then there’s Betsy and Corrie, who wave, who brighten, who recognize him from the photos he showed them the Christmas before last. Corrie asks if he still plays rugby.

Will grins, glances at Lestrade. “When I can, little lady. When I can.” Which is likely still every weekend. Will’s chest is more than twice as wide as all of Corrie, and though he’s thickset through the middle, Lestrade knows his body’s more hard than soft. But first Will calls her “little lady” and then doesn’t give match details, so Corrie loses interest immediately in favor of a display of football boots in a shopfront. She shouts to ask if Mycroft likes the red ones, and he excuses himself delicately. Betsy looks from Will to him and back again; he can see her put it all together. Betsy shadows Mycroft as they walk away, takes his arm before they’ve gone three steps.

Will looks him over again, doesn’t bother to even try to hide it. “You’re looking well.”

“Things have been good.” Frighteningly, startlingly good. He’s still not certain if last night could have possibly been real. This morning, before the girls woke up, Sherlock was resoundingly awful to all of them, but it almost seemed like a reflex, like an obligation to be fulfilled. Mycroft called it a derivative performance and looked smug. Sherlock refused to answer anyone but Betsy and Corrie until Lestrade put the green Peugeot, Sherlock, and John down at 221B Baker Street.

Will glances over his shoulder at the girls and Mycroft. “Ain’t they just.” His brow crinkles a little. “Posh bloke. Not your usual.” When Lestrade doesn’t respond to that, he says, “Those are the nieces? Or his get?”

“Bob’s girls. In for a visit.” Maybe his tone says that Will should have _known_ who they were—Will’s heard their names, has seen photos—because Will shoves his hands back in his pockets, sort of shrugs. Lestrade says, “Not your usual walkabout,” thinks he keeps most of the _my neighborhood_ out of his voice.

Will tips one shoulder toward the street behind him. “Seeing a man about a dog.” Will’s parlance for getting another round or seeing a physician, oddly enough. And they’re not in a pub.

“You all right then?” Lestrade reminds himself that Will bruised his ribs twice, had a concussion, and broke a total of four fingers in the year they were together during that weekend rugby. It became a kind of novelty to see him _without_ his pinky and ring-fingers taped together.

“Yeah, yeah.” Will grinds someone else’s fag-end further into the sidewalk.

Lestrade can’t help the spike of nerves in his chest. “Hey.” He puts his hand on Will’s shoulder. Even through his shirt, his skin’s hot, despite the day’s chill. He pushes down the reaction from memory. “This isn’t something I should know about, should I?” And if it is, he’s really going to hate having to explain that to Mycroft—whatever “that” might be—but he’s got to know. He swallows hard against the possibilities.

Will looks at his hand like his gaze is stuck there for a moment before he shakes himself loose from whatever thought he’s having—and Lestrade can probably guess at what it is—and he shakes his head hard. “No. Fuck no, nothing like that.” He shakes his head again. “Goddamn.” Instead, he pats his side gingerly. “Bruised my liver. Didn’t think that were possible.”

“Football looking better to you yet?” Will will watch, but he won’t play. Said it was too much nancing, not enough contact. Lestrade is certain it was more the running for ninety minutes.

Will grins. “Weren’t the rugby this time. Work’s the dangerous bit.” Reflexive attempt to catch a box on a wet lorry-ramp, a fall, a catch by an unfortunately placed guide-rail. “But you know all about that.” Will squints at Lestrade’s left eyebrow, which he’d gotten stitched right before they broke up, courtesy of another night with Sherlock. It didn’t even leave a scar. According to Will, though, injuries were worth it for beloved hobbies, not for work.

Will cocks his chin toward Mycroft’s back. “This one know what you get yourself into?” Implied: the hours, the uncertainty, the sour haze of failure from time to time, the way police work brutalizes his body and his psyche, some days. The lunatic consultant.

Lestrade can barely rein in the laugh that threatens. “Yeah,” he says. “Mycroft gets it.”

Will’s still looking at him. “This serious, then?”

Lestrade doesn’t need to pause, but he does. He glances at Mycroft’s profile, his perfect posture, and he knows he’s still trying to hear this conversation and can’t possibly, though he’s also dutifully looking at everything the girls point him toward, and Betsy grins broadly at something he says. “I suppose so.” He could just say _yes_ , but it feels like it would jinx something. And he doesn’t know how to say it to someone like Will.

“Looks it.” Will says it like that’s some sort of death-sentence, his nose wrinkled, though he puts up his hands in surrender at the glare he gets. He grins. “Still pretty when you’re angry, though.”

“Arsehole.” But he has to kind of laugh.

Then Will’s saying he’s got to be off, won’t interrupt his outing anymore. But when he shakes Lestrade’s hand again, he leans in. “You’ve still got my number if he’s afraid to break a sweat.” He turns, walks off with that swagger that made Lestrade drag him into a shower stall at the gym that first time.

Lestrade’s got his mobile in his hand, has the number deleted before Will even disappears into the crowd. He’s not angry, not exactly. Maybe relieved. He thinks that might be it, though there’s a nagging heat in his stomach. Will knows how to rile him up, and more than half of the reason he did it when they were together was for sex. It’s close to a conditioned response now, and there’s also the part where he hasn’t had sex, a proper fuck, in a long time. And he wants it. He wants it, with Mycroft, while simultaneously accepting that it’s not going to happen any time soon. This is the burden of a highly developed brain: knowledge and acceptance of two completely opposing concepts. Both things are true. He takes a deep breath, puts away his phone.

He catches up to Mycroft and the girls, who’ve drifted a few more shops on.

“He seems a pleasant enough person.” Mycroft glances over one shoulder, his gaze exactly in the direction Will headed.

“Yeah, Will’s all right.” That was never the problem with them. He and Will would probably be good friends if they hadn’t skipped introductions and gone straight to the sex. They walk, nearing the park that had been their destination. Betsy and Corrie race toward a few empty swings, and Lestrade sits on a bench where he can see them easily, is pleased when Mycroft sits with him, doesn’t check his mobile. “He played a little rugby for Saracens back in the day, before I met him, of course—hell of a forward.”

Mycroft nods tightly. “Quite.” He watches an elderly man with a Basset hound on a leash cross the east corner of the park. “I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anyone so much so quickly.”

The way he says it, so plainly—Lestrade isn’t certain he’s even heard him correctly. He coughs out a laugh. “You met him for twelve seconds.”

“If it were thirty, he’d already have been transferred to north Unst. To Clibberswick.” Mycroft’s face is darkly serious, and Lestrade is reminded of Sherlock all at once. It’s halfway between terrifying and hilarious.

“Don’t you dare.” He’s been the jealous boyfriend himself more than once, and he’s not particularly proud of it, knows he’s being awfully pot-kettle right now, but this is different. Mycroft could literally orchestrate just about anything and Lestrade would never know.

Mycroft’s thin-pressed mouth almost smiles.

Lestrade knots his fingers in Mycroft’s jacket-cuff. “If anything—untoward—happens in his career, we will have words.” More than words. “I am not even remotely joking.”

“Why should you care to protect him?” It isn’t particularly accusatory, is delivered as though Mycroft actually wants to know.

“Because he’s my ex-boyfriend, not my arch-nemesis.” It wasn’t even a particularly messy break-up. It sucked, and it took a long time to get over, but it wasn’t ugly. Lestrade’s only had one of those, and that was two decades ago, and now the throwing of plates seems just a waste of serviceable china. He scrubs his free hand over his face. “Are we actually having this conversation?”

Mycroft folds his hands over his umbrella handle as though Lestrade isn’t still holding fast to his sleeve. He turns his head toward the rest of the park. “We certainly do not have to be.”

And if they’re not having it, Mycroft gets his way. First one to quit loses. Lesson one from dealing with Sherlock.

“Yes, we certainly do.” Lestrade lets go Mycroft’s sleeve, puts his arm across the back of the bench, an inch from Mycroft’s shoulders. “Let it go, Mycroft. I wasn’t wronged in some tragic way, he didn’t abuse me, he didn’t even keep any of my stuff. ” Lestrade’s the one who gave away Will’s clothes instead of giving them back. Lestrade’s the one who lent them to Mycroft the night they met. He kneads at Mycroft’s shoulder, slides the side of his thumb along Mycroft’s neck once.

Mycroft is silent for a while, and they watch Betsy and Corrie, who are having some sort of contest that isn’t quite “who can swing highest,” though that appears to be part of it. Mycroft is quiet, and he inches a tiny bit closer to Lestrade’s side. Another kind of relief inches up his spine, but then Mycroft’s left hand makes that fist.

“How can anyone _live_ with that kind of— _stupidity_?” Mycroft’s face is still turned outward, his expression now perfectly even, but his voice is bitter. “To have you, to have the chance of _this_ —” one finger flicking toward the girls “—and _not want it_.” His hand crushing tight around the umbrella’s bamboo handle. “It’s infuriating.”

Lestrade doesn’t say out loud that he used to wonder the same thing, that that was what really hurt in the end: what was so wrong with wanting that? But agreeing with Mycroft right now isn’t going to help anything. More: Mycroft has said without saying that this is what he wants. Lestrade uncurls Mycroft’s fingertips, knots them with his own. All he says is, “Didn’t that work out in your favour, then?”

Mycroft is still for a moment, and the tension creeps out of his body, incrementally. He squeezes Lestrade’s hand. “Yes,” he says. “It did, at that.” And he breathes deep, leans a bit more into the circle of Lestrade’s arm, and they sit there, their hands joined on Mycroft’s thigh. A few passersby look at them, and one woman’s eyes narrow, but that’s all. Lestrade ignores the reflex to put a little space between them, and then he can’t because the girls rush the bench, Betsy flopping down beside him, Corrie on Mycroft’s other side.

Isn’t it time, Betsy wants to know, to get to the museum if they’re going to be there in time for the programme on the Sutton Hoo burial? And Corrie is push-pulling them up, up, up; don’t they know that’s the helmet on the _Beowulf_ book? Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Mycroft hangs his umbrella from his right wrist, twines the fingers of his left hand with Lestrade’s right as they walk.

***

Lestrade comes out of the toilet, running his tongue over his mint-clean teeth, to find Mycroft behind that goddamned screen again. It’s not his place to say anything about it; he knows Mycroft’s trying, knew this wasn’t going to happen the way he’s been used to relationships happening from the beginning. It’s not even that Mycroft doesn’t want to get naked in front of him—the thing with the screen is that it’s somehow a way to conceal himself from even the empty room. Lestrade’s trying to find a way to wrap his brain around words for that, something that isn’t going to sound accusatory. He still feels a little raw from the afternoon, doesn’t quite trust his own mouth because he knows he’s not very good at this part, when the sound registers as different: faster. Mycroft is usually meticulous about hanging each article of clothing, smoothed and folded on the correct seams. Now, his jacket is flopped over one edge of the screen, near to falling off. Now, there is only the soft, clothy thump of his trousers hitting the floor, the near-silent shuffle of pyjamas. Lestrade slows his own hands, only bothers with putting aside his wallet and keys and belt.

Mycroft comes around the edge of the screen, his fingers doing up the two buttons closest to the bottom of his shirt, and there he stops. The rest of it gapes, and Mycroft’s neck and cheeks are flushed, but he’s looking at Lestrade, his chin high.

Lestrade crosses the space between them, kisses Mycroft’s lips, both sides of his neck, the center of his chest. And this time, he does rub his cheek there, just a moment, before pulling Mycroft to the bedside. Lestrade tugs his thermal up and off, and before he can reach for the t-shirt he’s been sleeping in, Mycroft’s kissing him, the base of his throat. He lets the shirt where it was, tucked around the bottom poster of the bed, and opens his jeans, pushes them down his thighs. His prick twitches as Mycroft’s eyes follow the descending denim, and Mycroft lifts one bare foot to press the cloth down until Lestrade steps out. Until he’s standing there in nothing but his boxer-briefs in front of Mycroft, who is barefoot and partially bare-chested, his pyjama shirt listing left, drooping to show more of his shoulder. It feels strangely even.

Mycroft glances down his body, but he doesn’t touch. He looks long in the way he hasn’t let himself do before, and the weight of his gaze is a pleasant heat that hardens Lestrade further, that makes him want to undress completely so Mycroft can see all of him, but he doesn’t. And Mycroft doesn’t touch until his eyes settle on the round, gnarled scar a few inches above his left knee. Then his fingertips slip around its edges, into the cratered center.

“Explain,” Mycroft says, his voice soft but firm.

Lestrade clears his throat. This is not where he’d expected this to be going. “Bit of incentive to try harder to quit smoking.”

Mycroft’s tilts his head: explain further.

“I never wanted to bother with the patches. Figured I’d stop if I had to put my fags out on my own leg.” The one that had been the hardest to give up, the last cigarette of the day, sitting out on the fire escape and looking into the London night. The first time, the worst part might have been the scent of burning hair. After that—and it took him a while to think the trade might be worth it again—it was the new blister over the old blister, the actual hiss of the cherry ember in his skin’s weep. The burn got infected, three times, before he gave in and did the thing with the gum, the patches. It sinks in now: he hasn’t worn a patch since the night before he went to pick up the girls at the airport. He remembers peeling the last one off, tossing it in the bin, before getting in the shower. He’s been too busy to think about smoking this week, hasn’t been doing the things he usually did while smoking: drinking coffee alone, walking at night, having a beer at a pub. And he hasn’t been at work, where at least a third of the people he knows still smoke.

Mycroft sighs and he doesn’t have to say anything; Lestrade is well aware of how stupid it was. Bad enough the first time, but he’d repeated the cycle twice more across the space of four years, during really stressful months. The last time was the worst; the built-up scar tissue didn’t register pain the same way his skin did, so he managed to cause a lot more damage.

“Yeah,” he says, putting his hand on Mycroft’s side. “I know.” He is nine kinds of an idiot.

“You don’t,” Mycroft says. And he sinks to the floor, there at the edge of the bed, and he kisses the long-ruined skin. His tongue is a warm there and not-there, a wet, firm stroke at the edges of the scar, at the unmarred skin around it, a ghost of feeling, of pressure only, in its deep, ugly center. “You cannot even begin to know.” He rests his forehead against Lestrade’s thigh for a moment, his hand cupping the back of Lestrade’s knee. It is nearly ticklish, and maybe Lestrade shifts, and then Mycroft is looking up at him, looking up at him from there, on his knees.

Mycroft has to move from there, cannot, must not stay. It’s too much, is not enough. Lestrade reaches, hauls him up, and he means to speak first, but he kisses him, wraps him close for a moment before he says, “Come to bed and explain it to me.” He’s not sure what “it” is, but he hopes the talking he’s just invited will distract him from the heady want in his blood.

Mycroft slides in between the blankets, but he doesn’t make conversation. “After” is all he says, and he pulls Lestrade close, pulls him on top. Mycroft’s silk-clad leg hitches right around his hips, and the feeling of the cloth on his bare skin is feverish, Mycroft’s mouth hard on his. There’s no need to ask “after what?”

“Christ.” Lestrade gasps as Mycroft’s kisses smear down his neck, as one turns into a hint of suction, a scrape of teeth. “Lower,” he says. “Under the collar if you’re going to leave a calling-card.” He inches up himself, just a little, and the friction is sweet. When he glances down at Mycroft, whose mouth is paused against his skin, whose eyes are dark in the yellow lamplight, he can see the words sink in: what Lestrade has just said is a very real possibility.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Jesus, no.” He clutches at Mycroft’s shoulder. “Do it.”

Mycroft throws himself into it with a will, with a purpose, and even if Mycroft doesn’t quite know why he’s doing it, Lestrade knows. And he shouldn’t like it, but he does. He likes the possessive rake of Mycroft’s fingers through his hair, the careful bites between licks, between sucking kisses. When Lestrade says he can bite harder, he does, twice, and both times he seems surprised that he’s done it, but it feels amazing for all that.

The mark he leaves isn’t particularly dark or big, but it will last a day or two. And Mycroft keeps returning to it, with his eyes, with his mouth, and Lestrade rather enjoys that. He enjoys, even more, when Mycroft tugs his head down, tilts his own chin up.

“Would you do it to me?”

The request is a relatively simple one, the act innocent enough for all that. But the words in Mycroft’s mouth sound somehow incredibly illicit.

“Yes,” he says. A thousand times yes. But. “Stop me if it hurts.” He doesn’t add _if it hurts in a_ bad _way_ to clarify. Mycroft’s smart. He can figure out what gets him hot. Lestrade just doesn’t want him thinking anything’s _supposed_ to hurt, and he’s gotten carried away with this sort of thing before.

As he presses his lips to Mycroft’s skin, as he starts to suck, Mycroft shivers and arches up. He dares a gentle bite, and Mycroft’s other leg curls around his waist, a very soft sound coming from his closed mouth. He rubs down harder against him, bites to match, and the sound changes, sharper, and Mycroft recoils just a moment before pressing himself upward again. Lestrade raises his head to look Mycroft in the eyes, which open as he’s looking.

“Too hard?” At Mycroft’s little shake of the head—the same one that everyone who’s ever pretended not to have sprained his ankle at football so he could play for ten more minutes has used—he kisses him. “Yes, it was. You can say so.” He licks at Mycroft’s ear. “I want, very much, for all of it to be good for you. And if you don’t speak up now, it will be harder to do it later.” Which leads to mediocre sex, which is something no one should have to endure. He drags his teeth along the edge of Mycroft’s ear, is glad of the slight melting lean it gets him. “So I want to know what you don’t like, and what you _do_ like—” A little nibble at his earlobe, Mycroft’s fingers dragging on his tattoo. “—so I can do it again.” A lazy roll of his hips, and Mycroft presses him closer.

“I would like you to finish what you started.” He offers the base of his throat again. And Lestrade waits. “I liked the first bite.” He swallows. “And the sucking.” His cheeks are so red.

“Oh, the mouth on you.” Lestrade kisses him again, sucks a little on his lower lip, and Mycroft’s hand is in his hair. Lestrade wants to say, but doesn’t, that if Mycroft likes the feeling so much here, on his neck, on his fingertips, he’s going to love it on his prick. And he doesn’t say that he’s promised himself he’s going to get Mycroft to say “fuck” in bed, somehow. He says nothing more, just does as requested, tinting Mycroft’s skin with the pressure of his mouth. By the end of it, Mycroft’s rocking up against him, and they’re pressed together, chest to chest. Lestrade inches down—Mycroft doesn’t stop him, and he does his best to stay within what he thinks is in-bounds, so to speak—to lick his way to Mycroft’s left nipple. He teases it with the tip of his tongue, and Mycroft glances down, throws his head back, bites his own fist to muffle the moan.

“Sssh.” He sucks there, reveling in the taste of Mycroft’s bare skin, and Mycroft drags one of his hands up, draws two of Lestrade’s fingers into his mouth. Lestrade finds himself fighting to be quiet, instead grinding his groin down into the mattress, moving from one tight nub to the other. Mycroft’s legs still pin him close, his knees level with Lestrade’s shoulders. It almost feels like fucking, the arch of their bodies together, the muscle memory, and a small scrap of thought suggests that Mycroft is rather flexible for a man who doesn’t seem to do much physical activity. The thought doesn’t make it any easier to stay quiet, any easier to slow down.

Mycroft’s teeth dragging softly on the pads of his fingers doesn’t help either, or the thick, firm length of his prick pressed against his stomach. There’s no explanation for why it’s this good, rubbing off like teenagers when they’re grown men, but then Mycroft actually tugs at his hair and he has to stifle another moan on Mycroft’s skin. He slips his fingers from Mycroft’s mouth, drags them spit-slick along the line of his jaw, down his throat to skate over the purpled mark.

Mycroft gasps, says, “That shouldn’t—” The rest of it gets lost in the curled bowline of his body, another bitten-back sound.

“Stop thinking so hard.” Lestrade gives in to supporting himself on one arm, puts his other hand on the back of Mycroft’s thigh. It’s difficult to get purchase with the sliding silk—he doesn’t want to pinch—and then Mycroft’s hand meets his, and his chest heaves, and he pulls Lestrade’s hand until it’s squarely on his arse.

Everything unravels from there.

Mycroft grabs hard at his shoulders, presses his face into side of Lestrade’s neck, and he’d push back until he can see him, but he feels the vibration of muffled sound, the frantic biting kiss. The heated pulse, the sliding silk.

Mycroft’s breath is ragged against his skin, and he holds fast for a moment. Lestrade thinks he could really get used to that. Then Mycroft nudges him onto his back, trails his own hand from Lestrade’s bicep to his wrist, not being so overt as to really move his hand, but there’s enough pressure that Lestrade knows what he’s angling for. He shifts his right hand to the inside of his thigh, watches Mycroft follow the movement. He _likes_ what Mycroft’s angling for.

He likes even more the dart of Mycroft’s tongue over his bottom lip, the visible gathering of himself.

“Would you do it again? That I—” Another flicker of tongue, a shallow breath. “—might watch?”

That’s nearly enough, just the sound of Mycroft’s voice, the forced calm even though Lestrade knows it’s hard for him. He pushes his palm over the fabric of his pants, the red cloth smudged dark at the tip of his prick, all the way down to cup his balls. Mycroft’s left hand knots on his hip as his eyes follow the motion.

Lestrade decides it’s worth the chance. “Could do more than watch, if you wanted.” And if not, that’s more than fine, too. But Mycroft shifts immediately, fits his fingers exactly over Lestrade’s. The weight of his hand, the gentle pressure— “God, that.” He widens his fingers, tightens his grip, and Mycroft’s fingers slide tentatively into the spaces between his, curling under his shaft. Lestrade wishes, desperately, that there wasn’t cloth blunting his touch.

And though Mycroft said he wanted to watch, he leans down, kisses him, doesn’t stop, keeps them threaded together, mouths and hands and the stuttering desire between them. The thrumming heat twists tight, breaks into a sound Mycroft swallows. When he lifts his own hand away, Mycroft’s remains, for a moment, cupping the softening flesh. Mycroft’s hands are larger than his own, palms wider, fingers longer. He’s known that from the beginning, probably knew it before he’d even met Mycroft because Sherlock’s hands are larger than his own. He doesn’t know why it feels important now, only that it does.

“Gregory.” Mycroft rests their foreheads together. They breathe. Lestrade isn’t sure he remembers how, but it comes back to him. Eventually, he nudges Mycroft out of bed to go clean up. And stretches himself over as much of the mattress as possible, feeling a soft pop in one knee, the knuckles of his right hand. Everything feels good. He goes limp there until Mycroft comes back, now wearing the ruby pyjamas.

“Red’s a good color on you.” He wonders what Mycroft would do if he ironed Arsenal patches onto the pockets of all of his pyjamas. The idea’s tempting.

“Bite your tongue.”

“Bite it for me.” He grins.

And Mycroft does, nips at his mouth as he kneels on the edge of the mattress. “Is there any room for me in there?”

Lestrade pushes himself up. “I suppose you could squeeze in.” He picks up his pyjamas, shuffles into the lav.

When he comes back from the washroom, when he tucks back in beside Mycroft, he’s glad to see the buttons are again undone, though it’s only the top two instead three. Mycroft pulls him up to his side, puts an arm around his shoulders, arranges Lestrade’s limbs over his own body.

Lestrade touches the mark on his collarbone. The mirror above the sink showed another, less pronounced, on the other side. “I should introduce you to all of my exes.” If this is what it gets him—he’ll consider the awkwardness worth it. At the severe look Mycroft gives him—not half in jest—Lestrade still has to grin.

But Mycroft shakes his head curtly. “I am not so good of a person, Gregory. You would not like the result.” He’s being honest. Lestrade thinks he should try to be more serious, but it’s difficult just now.

“I like this result.” His skin still tingling from the cool washcloth, his heartbeat slowing, Mycroft keeping him close. He mouths lazily at Mycroft’s throat, and he remembers. “What were you going to say, before?”

“Just this.” Mycroft tips his chin up, kisses him again.

Lestrade is certain there was more. But this is more than enough for now.


End file.
